


lost and found

by feralphoenix



Series: romeo and cinderella [7]
Category: Blaze Union
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Child Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-12
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 03:16:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Who decided that you won't find what you've lost? Run--you can put an end to this game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. lost and found

**Author's Note:**

> _(some possible answers_ – I want to see you, I want to love you, I want to speak to you, I’m so afraid we’ll lose each other)

He spent most of the day curled up in Gulcasa’s room, feeling feverish and headachey, hiding under the comforter and dozing fitfully. He didn’t want to run into Emilia and the twins—he didn’t want to be asked, didn’t want to make any explanations. If Gulcasa were there with him it might be all right, but he had called the man named Velleman to have some sort of quiet conference, and staying in the proximity of the sharp-eyed stranger was too much for Nessiah’s nerves today.

The driving urge to get out, to run straight to Yggdra’s side and find a way to shield her—the dregs of it still remained in him. It wasn’t overpowering his every thought the way that it had early in the morning—everything Gulcasa had said made too much sense—but he still felt miserable and guilty. Even under all the sheets and blankets, he felt cold.

Nessiah pulled the covers over his head and crouched down on knees and elbows, the side of his face pressed to the mattress. The bed smelled like fabric softener and spice and bonfires. The warm fall scents lulled him, and he closed his eyes again.

It was darker when he opened them, with lamplight seeping in from underneath the gaps he’d left raised to breathe. Either the sound of the door or the light switch must have woken him.

“It’s me,” said Gulcasa’s voice. Nessiah let out the breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding, gathered his limbs underneath himself, and sat up, still wearing the comforter over his head and shoulders like a veil. He curled his hands around its edges, somehow needing something to occupy his fingers.

Gulcasa stepped into Nessiah’s view and sat on the stretch of empty mattress that Nessiah had been curled up on previously, between him and the pillow.

“Velleman’s gone home,” Gulcasa said. “Come downstairs with me.”

When he hesitated, Gulcasa smiled at him.

“I’ve got a phone call to make, but I’m making you dinner first. And there’s an idea I had—something I want to ask.”

Nessiah let his gaze slide down to the mattress, to the crinkles and folds in the sheets created by Gulcasa’s weight, to Gulcasa’s golden fingers curled neatly atop the crinkles and folds.

He nodded a little.

“Okay,” said Gulcasa. “Come on.”

And so they left the room and walked down the stairs, Nessiah trailing almost directly behind Gulcasa, wanting to reach out and pluck at one of the folds in Gulcasa’s loose sleeve and hang on, holding the urge in from a lack of surety. It was cold: Or maybe he simply felt that it was because he’d grown used to the warmth of the bed.

When they got into the kitchen, Gulcasa did something that Nessiah thought that people never did except in films, which was to reach back and casually tie his long hair into a knot at the nape of his neck. It was a very loose knot, just a fold and a loop, and Nessiah was not quite sure that it wouldn’t come undone immediately—Gulcasa’s hair seemed very thick and very heavy and very silky besides, and there was certainly a lot of it. But the knot stayed.

Gulcasa slapped one hand lightly against one of the off-white counters. Nessiah watched the gesture blankly, then realized Gulcasa was indicating for him to jump up and sit there, and immediately felt his body begin to curl backward.

“It’s okay,” Gulcasa said, “this counter’s had plenty of butts on it before.” He patted it again, helpfully.

Nessiah gave in and rested both hands flat on the countertop, pushing to give himself the leverage to swing his legs up. His movements were all painfully awkward, and all the clambering twisted his skirt up over his knees. He rested his heels along the drawer handle beneath him, shifted up on one hand and then the other in order to straighten it out. His cheeks felt hot from his lack of grace. When he looked up, Gulcasa wasn’t facing him.

“I’ll help next time,” Gulcasa said. “I guess that’s kind of awkward in a skirt.”

“That’s all right.” Nessiah lifted one hand to touch the ends of his hair. “I’ll get something to stand on—and listen to us, taking it for granted that there will be a next time.”

For some reason, this made Gulcasa smile.

“As I’m up here anyway, do I need to help retrieve anything?”

“Nope,” Gulcasa said. “I’ve got everything under control—all you need to do is watch, and listen.”

And he opened the refrigerator door, bending down to pull out a styrofoam platter of ground beef patties, still covered in plastic wrap. Placing this on the counter beside the stove, Gulcasa retrieved a set of pots and pans from around the kitchen, culminating in a cardboard box of long thin pasta out of a high cabinet.

Coming to a stop before the stove, he gazed upward and frowned slightly, smacking himself in the forehead with the box. _“Two_ phone calls. The girls are over at Siskier’s,” he said, drawing Nessiah into his solitary conversation with a look. “We decided that was best after how the party went down, via a lot of texting and some short phone calls—you were upstairs and/or asleep for a lot of that. They’ll be coming back tomorrow, so tonight it’s just you and me. I just remembered, though, that I need to get them to go shopping on their way. I’m making matzo ball soup tomorrow, and we’re out of like a lot of stuff I’d need for that. Potatoes too. The ones in the pantry are not going to make enough latkes for five people.”

Nessiah wondered at the unfamiliar names. He thought back to vague memories of grocery shopping when he had been a small child, and boxes of food in the supermarket’s ethnic aisle.

“I don’t think I saw mix in the cabinets,” he mused, more to himself than anything else.

“That’d be because I prefer to make things from scratch,” Gulcasa answered anyway. He had turned on the faucet to fill a large pot, and raised his voice over the water. “For Jewish food, all the preparation’s a part of it anyway—at least for me. Leon likes to tell me I’m a fussy shit, probably because he’s still holding the time I threw all his frozen dinners out against me. But I just like to cook. I like working with my hands, like this. Ever since I took the company over, most of my job has been about executive decisions and double-checking other people’s work and such—lots of worrying with no physical outlet. So doing things with my hands helps.”

Gulcasa shut off the water. It didn’t squeak and thud the way it had at that man’s house. A brief and powerful memory came back to Nessiah of having to tiptoe and sweat in the night to relieve his thirst, for fear of those meaty hands. His head ached. He worried for Yggdra’s sake—there were so many little ways to stem the avalanche of violence that she wouldn’t know. His stomach hurt, as though his insides were being removed with an ice cream scoop. He folded his arms around himself, stared down at the nonsense patterns of the floor.

“Do you have any comfort foods?”

“What?” Nessiah said. When he raised his head, Gulcasa was looking at him, rough hands splayed casually along the edge of the pot.

“I’ve noticed while I was rambling that I’m booking this week’s dinners with all of mine, even though you’ve definitely got a lot more anxiety to deal with than me. So before I succeed in making a complete ass of myself—what do you like to eat that makes you feel better? If I know how to make it, I’ll make it; if I’ve never done it before, I’ll give you my best effort.”

“Oh.” Nessiah looked down at his knees. He curled his toes experimentally. “I don’t think I have any. I haven’t gotten to—to eat things that I liked. It’s been more important to tolerate what I’m given, and eat lightly so I don’t—suffer if I’m given nothing.”

Gulcasa made a low noise of consideration. When Nessiah didn’t look up, the pots started to clatter again. He heard plastic being unwrapped and the stove turning on.

“If you’re cooking it, I’ll probably be able to eat most things,” he went on. “So it doesn’t matter to me what you make.”

When he peeked up through the curtain of his hair, Gulcasa was standing at the stove with his eyes closed, smiling and red-faced.

“That is probably one of the nicest things anybody’s ever said to me.” He lifted his chin, rolled his shoulders. “If you change your mind, though, don’t hesitate to make requests.”

After that, there was relative quiet for a while as Gulcasa pushed browning ground beef around in a pan with a spatula.

“……You threw out all of Leon’s frozen dinners?” Nessiah finally asked, covering his smile.

“I had to babysit him once,” Gulcasa replied, nodding. “The contents of his refrigerator were ten kinds of hideous. I’m sure his cholesterol levels are thanking me.”

Nessiah couldn’t help but laugh. Gulcasa’s smile broadened.

“When did you learn to cook?”

Gulcasa frowned at the ground beef, covered the pan, and stepped one pace to the side to fiddle with the dial that corresponded to the pot of water. “Started learning really basic stuff when I was in the shelter—giving us chores and routine was a part of some kids’ treatment—but I didn’t really start _wanting_ to learn more until after I was adopted. Getting to play with this nice kitchen, getting to reconnect with parts of my heritage through food—it started being a reward, something fun. The Albelts were good at motivating kids.” He shrugged. “Now I have matching shakers for all the spices I use the most, and I can cook or bake just about anything with practice. It’s something that connects me to what I care about, and something I can do for the people around me now.” He turned the heat back down.

The kitchen was beginning to smell like cooking meat, with the soft hiss of the burners as backing. A few thin tufts of hair were starting to slide out of the knot Gulcasa had tied it in, framing the nape of his neck. His expression was soft and tender, steeped in sentimentality. Just looking at him was incredibly calming.

“This also makes a good segue into what I wanted to talk to you about,” Gulcasa said, and Nessiah jolted a little where he sat. “Things are probably going to be hectic for a while—for a lot of reasons—and it’d probably be safest to wait until everything boils over before any of this is made official. But how would you feel about doing some of our bookkeeping work?”

“What?”

“You’re good with numbers. It takes someone with a head for them to be able to catch an error like the one you caught, before the party and all the havoc. And on top of that, my head of accounting is basically a rocket scientist in her off hours—she doesn’t let little mistakes slip by her so easily. I can’t put you on the official payroll just yet, because if this company is going to attract attention, we don’t want unsavory eyes finding your name there. And we don’t want to resort to pseudonyms and what amounts to well-intentioned fraud to pay you without making you an official employee. That would be ridiculously hypocritical considering how I got my job in the first place.

“But—just out of personal experience, having work to do really helps you feel like a person, and like you have control over some things. If you have work to do and you’re good at it, that helps you learn your own dependability. And when you’re scared, it’s nice to have a distraction.”

Nessiah looked down at his hands and steepled his fingers. “…That’s a big offer to make, to someone who’s never even held a job.”

“The nice thing about being personally acquainted is that I know and care a lot more about your actual ability level rather than your credentials. I also don’t care if you just want to give things a test run to start with, or ease into things bit by bit so that it’s not stressful. We’re functioning fine with Eudy’s hand on the helm. I’d wager we’d do a lot better with you two working collaboratively, but I’m not about to throw you in with no floatation device.”

When he raised his head, Gulcasa was lifting the lid off the pot of water. A great cloud of steam rose out. He set the lid in the drying rack next to the sink, then opened the box of spaghetti.

“I also know that adoption by a wealthy family is a windfall that most abuse victims don’t get, which is why I try to use my position to give people who weren’t so lucky a leg up,” Gulcasa went on. He snapped several long beams of pasta and dropped them into the pot, then picked up more dry spaghetti and repeated the process. “The job offer’s what I’d do for anyone. Your circumstances specifically have dictated the exact terms, though. Contrary to what my sisters might have you believe, I do not actually go around inviting _every_ prospective employee to live with us.”

Nessiah smiled a little, which was probably what Gulcasa had intended. “If I decide to accept the trial offer and things don’t work out, what then?”

“Then they don’t work out, and I’ll try to find you something else to do to help you feel productive while you’re more or less under house arrest,” Gulcasa replied immediately. “The firm has lots of friends. If you still want to try working, I’ll call in some favors. My business partners and associates are all very understanding people—otherwise I couldn’t be partners and associates with them.”

“It sounds like quite a network.”

_“Is_ quite a network.” Gulcasa sounded very proud. “It may not be the biggest, especially compared to the Artwaltz family, but there’s a lot of trust here. Not everyone’s a disaster magnet like Medoute, but I like to help people if they’re in a tough spot. That’s what helps _me_ feel useful.”

“I see.”

“Been busting my ass at this for years. Also despite what my sisters might tell you, I _do_ take my job seriously.” Gulcasa dumped the last of the spaghetti into the pot, dusted off his hands, and adjusted the heat. “So I’m serious when I say I think you’d be an asset.”

Somehow, it was easy to tell that Gulcasa would accept an outright refusal with just a little disappointment and move on. And for some reason, that was comforting—whatever his answer, Nessiah could trust that there wouldn’t be any repercussions.

“I’ll think about it,” was what he said aloud.

“I appreciate it,” Gulcasa said.

It was quiet for a while. Gulcasa took a can of tomato paste from the pantry and checked on the meat.

“I’m calling the police after dinner,” Gulcasa announced, apropos of nothing.

Something—some sort of cry—started to rise from the base of Nessiah’s ribs. He held it in with both hands as his vision went blurry.

“That’s what I asked Velleman here for, to get his advice. Soltier warned me, too, that we might be putting you in danger by pursuing this. But—

“Look. It’d probably be safest for me to just keep you here in the house and go on with my life as if the party didn’t happen. Pretend I didn’t see. Pretend I don’t know. But I can’t do that. It goes against everything I’ve built myself up to become. I did see. Because I saw, I’m responsible. I have to do everything I can to put an end to this, or—it’s going to kill me. And I think you won’t be able to live with closing the truth out either, anymore.

“So I’m going to be as careful as I can, and still do everything that I can. I will protect you, and I will not give up on trying to get her help. Because I can’t just abandon someone who’s standing in the same shoes I used to. Because—she doesn’t deserve this, any more than we did. Because as long as that guy’s still allowed to do whatever he pleases, you’ll never be able to leave this house without fear.”

Gulcasa continued to face the stovetop as he spoke. With his hair pulled out of his face, Nessiah had a clear view of his profile—his narrowed eyes and the slant of his eyebrows as he struggled for the right words.

“I couldn’t save myself,” Gulcasa said at last, “but I will save every other life that I can.”

Nessiah remembered that tone. Gulcasa had sounded much the same the night that they had met. He remembered lying cold and exhausted and shivering in the backseat of Gulcasa’s car. His eyes hurt. When he closed them, fat tears ran down his face.

He slid down from the counter and took two steps. He reached out, put both arms around Gulcasa’s waist, and held on tightly. He rested his forehead against Gulcasa’s back and closed his eyes again.

“I know,” Nessiah said. “I’m afraid. But I understand how you feel, and I couldn’t stand to just leave her there either.”

Gulcasa was very still for a while. After a few minutes had passed, a rough warm hand covered the backs of Nessiah’s fingers.

“I swear to you, I won’t let them take you away,” he said.

Nessiah let go when Gulcasa did, in the name of allowing him to finish making dinner. He did not get back up to sit on the countertop, choosing to lean on the refrigerator door instead. He watched Gulcasa stir the spaghetti; watched him uncover the meat, separate out the fat and grease, and stir in tomato paste and spices.

He thought again about how normal people did not stop to rescue suicide jumpers from bridges on cold rainy nights. He thought about how he mourned that Gulcasa had had to suffer like him as a child, but was still grateful for the whole and sum of the Gulcasa who stood in front of him, abuse scars and all. He thought that Gulcasa might live his whole life still feeling as though he needed to prove something to himself.

He thought: How selfish, and how kind.

“Sorry, would you get the colander?” Gulcasa asked, shutting off the burners.

Nessiah opened a few different cabinets until he was able to locate it, and then passed it to Gulcasa with a smile.

 

 

 

The spaghetti was easily restaurant-quality. After the first bite, Nessiah told Gulcasa so.

“Wow, rude,” said Gulcasa with a carefree laugh. “You could not buy spaghetti like this in any restaurant. Nobody else makes it meaty enough.”

“My apologies,” said Nessiah, smiling down at his plate. “That is very true.”

 

 

 

“Hello? Yes. Yes. Thank you. There’s an incident of possible abuse or assault I’d like to report.”

As Gulcasa paced the kitchen with his head tilted and a cellular phone to his ear, Nessiah stood at the sink and washed dishes. Gulcasa was on his blind side, so if he wanted to watch, he would have to turn very deliberately. Nessiah was glad for this. It kept him from peeking nervously and continuously out of his peripheral vision.

Over the sound of running water, he listened as Gulcasa gave his identity and explained the party situation, Yggdra’s appearance, and her flight. He explained his not following her as a combination of not wanting to frighten her further and having to look after another guest having a panic attack. He did not name names. Nessiah exhaled a long and nervous breath.

“I guessed who she was because we’d met at another company event,” Gulcasa was saying to the police. “I checked the guest list to be sure, and it was definitely her. There was only one ‘Yggdra’ there, and that was Miss Artwaltz. It’s a rather uncommon name, anyway.

“Also—while I realize I have no place telling your office how to do its job—this is an issue I have personal stake in. I am sure you’re already aware. I’m concerned—someone in the position to do that to the face of a girl from such an influential family might also be very powerful. Please check to see if there’s a record of reports or accusations of abuse towards the people around her—and please leave a record of this incident as well.

“…‘Mr. Albelt’ is my adoptive father. You can use my given name.” As he said so, Gulcasa’s voice became more relaxed. “And since you offered, I will make a follow-up call to see how this goes. I don’t know the Artwaltzes well enough for a personal call, but I’m worried for her.

“All right. Thank you. Please do your best.”

There was a clap of plastic. Nessiah shut the faucet off and dried his shaking hands on a damp washcloth. When he twisted his waist to finally look, Gulcasa was giving him a thumbs-up from the kitchen.

Nessiah clenched both hands on the front of his skirt and let himself sag against the kitchen counter. His heart was beating as fast as a bird’s. He felt he might pass out.

In the other room, Gulcasa was already back on the phone.

“Hey, Siskier? Put Emilia on—I’ve got a shopping list for you guys on your way back here.”


	2. fireworks

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _(say goodbye to the old world_ – the sky loses color and pours into your hand)

The café was just about empty by the time that Gulcasa got there. This was both a given—it was after most people’s lunch breaks ended and still before most people got off work, and the weather was cold and rainy—and a stroke of luck, since that meant less risk of being overheard. He might have scheduled this meeting at his house, but if Nessiah walked in on the discussion it might distress him. Right now, that was the number one thing Gulcasa wanted to avoid.

Siskier sat in a booth in the far corner, and she raised her hand once he was through the door. Gulcasa closed his umbrella, shook his hair out like a dog, and tapped his shoes against the floor, first one toe and then the other.

He waved to Medoute where she stood polishing the counter. “Hang your coat up,” she said, “I don’t need you dripping all over my nice leather booths.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he replied. “I’d like to order anything as long as it’s hot and not Americano, which in my opinion does not qualify as coffee.”

“We don’t serve Americano and you know it,” Medoute said. “Stop being an ass and go sit down, don’t keep Siskier waiting. Your It’s A Surprise will be along when I’m done polishing the counter.”

Gulcasa went. He hung up his coat and umbrella on the brass spokes screwed into the division between Siskier’s booth and the next one, and sat down.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey yourself,” he said. “How are things?”

“Okay, despite the weather. What about you guys?”

“We’re more or less hanging in there. The girls have got exams coming up, so Aegina’s a nervous wreck. Luciana and Emilia aren’t helping, they’ve just started needling her over how she takes this stuff too seriously. Not everybody’s built that way. Nessiah had been helping her study, but he’s in no state to do that these days, spends most of his time hiding in quiet rooms.”

“And you?” Siskier had a tall glass of something sweet-smelling and milky, which she reeled towards her with one hand while lifting a strawberry macaron from her plate to dip it in the drink with her other. “I know you had some conferencey thing going on, but how was that?”

“Awful.” Gulcasa rolled his eyes. “I swear I cannot see what is so difficult to understand about being told, no, you can’t mine here, there are people living on that land, and no they will not move because the land is important to them for religious reasons, and no means no, and there are plenty of other natural metal deposits in the world so you really and truly can leave this one in peace.”

“It’s only difficult to understand when you care too much about money,” Siskier supplied, smiling over the rim of her glass.

“Fuck money,” said Gulcasa. “Let’s go back to a barter system. We’ll live on trade and goodwill and everyone will be at least twenty percent happier.”

“It’s a nice thought,” said Siskier. Gulcasa sighed and plucked a vanilla macaron from her plate.

“Although,” Gulcasa said at length.

“Although?”

“You know, when I came back from that meeting I was basically dead on my feet and in the worst mood—and then I come home and, apropos of nothing, Nessiah is in the kitchen.”

“Oh no,” said Siskier.

“No, but he knows when I usually get in, and even though he didn’t turn around and look at me I could see him coming up _so_ red when he heard me, so it looked like he’d meant to be further along. So I went to go get changed, right, and I came right back down instead of lying around to decompress because that’s worrying, is seeing someone who’s inexperienced fooling around in the kitchen. And when I get down the stairs, Nessiah’s putting soup on the table. For me. He made me dinner because he knew I was going to be coming home too stressed to even cook.”

“Oh my god.” Siskier covered her smile with one hand. Her nails were lacquered pale pink, decorated with bands of purple and white. They matched her earrings and the thin printed tee she wore. The way she coordinated her outfits to her nail art whenever she felt like doing her hands up never failed to amaze and sort of baffle him. “And was it, like, actually edible?”

“Yeah.” Gulcasa looked down at the table, pushing his hair back. He couldn’t help but grin a little, even now as he told the story. “I mean, the broth at least was definitely premade and the vegetables were roughly cut and probably hadn’t been cooked quite long enough, they were still pretty hard. But it tasted okay, like, I didn’t have to force myself to eat it just to spare his feelings. He might be good at cooking with some practice and if he can stand to relax a little.”

“That is kind of really adorable, wow,” said Siskier.

“Oh, but I’m not even done yet. Turns out the reason the soup was running behind was because he’d also spent the afternoon working towards the production of a loaf of banana bread.”

“Oh my _god.”_

“I know, though. I think I smiled and said thank you and other dumb things, but the whole time I was like, _help, help, cute, help_ on the inside. And the bread wasn’t awful either. It _was_ from a mix instead of from scratch, but it wasn’t store-bought. I swear he must have had help, because I don’t keep cake mix and crap in the house, and Nessiah hates going outside. I think this means Nessiah’s officially a family member now, if the girls were in on all this and actually went shopping for him.”

Siskier had propped her face on her hand in the middle of this and was smiling at Gulcasa with a knowing sort of look in her eyes.

“You are _so_ gone on this guy,” she said at last. “I mean, you actually happily ate his not-totally-from-scratch cooking, and now you are here gushing about it. Wow, _look_ at you.”

Gulcasa considered commenting on that, but decided better of it.

From some stroke of good luck, that was when Medoute arrived at the table, placing a tall coffee and a plate in front of Gulcasa. The plate had a grilled sandwich on it, what appeared to be multiple layers of bacon and lettuce on thick, buttered pumpernickel bread.

“Your drink’s a marble macchiato, and go ahead and buy some pastries while you’re here,” she said. “I’ll bill you before you leave, so stop by the front later. Siskier, you should probably remind him so that he doesn’t walk out with his head in the clouds.”

“I’ve never done anything like that,” Gulcasa protested even as Siskier saluted.

“There’s always a first time,” Medoute said while looking down her nose at him, “and sometimes when you get emotional you stop paying attention to your surroundings. Either way, I’ll be at the counter if you need anything.”

She left, and Gulcasa and Siskier both watched her go.

“I guess we should probably get to the main topic,” said Gulcasa. He breathed out, feeling his expression change as he sobered up. “First off, is it likely for you to get traced?”

“No, and just in case, I had Eudy nuke all the googling I did off my browser history, so I assume it’ll stay nuked. I wrote everything up by hand instead of storing the information digitally, and when I had Zilva and Elena look at public records at the library, they Xeroxed it all plus a bunch of unrelated stuff in case anyone else was watching.” She turned to her side and rummaged with something too low down for Gulcasa to see, and came up with a fat manila file folder. “Everything’s in here for you to go over later, but I’ll give you the basic rundown anyway to save time.” She pushed it across the table to him. It was clipped closed; as long as he carried it underneath his coat he thought he wouldn’t have trouble transporting it home. “Do you want me to start from Nessiah, or from the current situation with the Artwaltzes?”

“From the beginning,” said Gulcasa. Siskier nodded.

“Okay. I found his birth records,” she said. “For a Nessiah Aries Artwaltz, born in September. He’s nineteen. He was born to a branch family, no siblings. There was an article later about his parents’ double suicide, which explained that due to family circumstances he would be taken in by a family friend and business partner instead of his relatives.”

“Which checks out with what Nessiah himself told me.” Gulcasa took a sip of his coffee and folded his arms.

“Yeah, and the guy who adopted him? His name’s Alanjame. He’s top brass in the Artwaltz company, got promoted to a major advisor after the last guy, an old man named Bly, quit because of an office politics scandal. There wasn’t too much to go on about that, because that position doesn’t qualify you as a public figure and so there’s only so far that press can go without invading your privacy, but from what I can tell Bly was brutally honest and there were people who didn’t like his opinions. Alanjame got the position afterward and still has it probably because he’s oilier.”

Gulcasa knew the type. There had been too many like that in his own company, immediately after he’d ascended to president, and he’d done his best to get rid of them as quickly as possible.

“Alanjame. I feel like I’ve heard the name before.”

“You might have seen him in press conferences and things,” Siskier offered. “There are photos in here. Squat guy, kind of short, the general rich and corpulent type.”

Gulcasa definitely knew the type. He clenched his hands, trying not to imagine. “So—anything about any reports of abuse, criminal charges, anything?”

“No, or at least nothing public.” Siskier narrowed her eyes. “There was something that mentioned a lost child being found and brought back home to this Alanjame guy’s residence, but it was very short and very vague.”

“And not at all true,” Gulcasa said.

“Probably not.” Siskier lifted her drink and shook it. “Anyhow, something interesting is that there’s no record of Nessiah ever attending public schools. There was a small announcement in the local paper about his graduating college through correspondence, so it looks like he’s done all his mandatory schooling over internet classes and so on. The newspaper would have it that he’s got two bachelor of science degrees in theoretical mathematics and a bachelor of arts in linguistics. I checked the college website, and his name is listed under the graduates, so it looks legit.”

Gulcasa whistled low. _“Three_ degrees at nineteen.”

“And two of them in math. No wonder he was able to pick up on Eudy’s mistake, she’s more interested in science and programming than juggling numbers.” She sighed. “But it’s sad. I mean, if he’s never been to school, then he’s been cloistered away with that guy his whole life. No wonder he’s so awkward around people if he never got much practice with social situations.”

“Shit.” Gulcasa leaned back to stare at the ceiling. “Siskier, I want to go find this Alanjame fuck and break his face.”

“I know, but you can’t. You’d get sued or go to jail for battery. It wouldn’t help anyone, and actually if anything ever happened to you there are a lot of people who’d be in serious trouble. I know you know better than to do anything dumb and reckless. It’s not just Nessiah who’s riding on action being taken through the right channels, it’s everybody.”

“I do know better. That still doesn’t stop me from wanting to do it.” Gulcasa let out a strained breath and looked back down. Siskier was watching him with a tense, unreadable expression. “He’s been locked up by a creepy asshole for most of his life, and nobody ever cared enough to even investigate how he was doing, much less try to fix the situation. Fucking hell.”

Siskier made a soft noise of assent. “The only way Nessiah must have been able to escape was because he still made appearances at family functions and such. That guy must have used those things as a way to pull the wool over Artwaltzes’ eyes. As long as he could stroll Nessiah out like a dress-up doll and make things look like they were okay on the surface, nobody would watch close enough to notice anything was wrong.”

Gulcasa rested his face in his hands.

“Sorry,” Siskier said. “I’m just making it worse, huh.”

“No, it’s—shit. I could have done something, maybe. I keep thinking I could’ve done something and it’s driving me crazy.” He pressed his fingertips against his forehead until he could feel his nails digging into his skin. “The night I met Nessiah I was going home from a party on Artwaltz property. He must have been there, that’s where he must have escaped from. And Yggdra was there too, that was where I met her. That Alanjame, he started on her after Nessiah made a break for it. If I’d—stayed with her, or kept in contact with her or anything, then—”

“Gulcasa, stop it.” Her tone made him look back up. She was scowling at him. “First of all, thinking like that’s not going to help anyone, because we can’t change what’s already happened. Regretting things and blaming yourself is self-abusive and it’s stupid. And besides, if you’d decided to stay at the party with Yggdra, you might not have been in the right place at the right time to keep Nessiah from going through with his suicide attempt. With the state you said he was in when you first brought him home, where precisely were you supposed to find time to get back in touch with some girl who hit on you at a party?”

Gulcasa made a face. She was making sense, and he hated it. “Well—yeah, but even so. When I think that maybe we could’ve avoided all this…”

“Oh, give it a _rest,”_ Siskier said sharply. “I know you have this thing where you feel like you’ve got to save the whole world with your own two hands, but there’s only so much that one person can ever do. You can’t tell me that you regret all the time and effort you spent on saving Nessiah and helping him feel like a person again, can you?”

“No,” he replied.

“Good,” she told him. “You have no idea how disappointed I’d be in you if you were ready to drop the guy you have such a great big stupid crush on at a moment’s notice just because it turns out that someone else is needy too.”

He wilted; that hurt, and worse, it felt true. “Shit. I just—”

“You just forget everything else when you get worked up,” Siskier supplied. She bit her lips and covered her mouth with one hand, rubbing the skin just under her nose in a way that made Gulcasa wonder if she wasn’t covering a smile. “Man, Medoute has really got your number.”

Gulcasa pushed his plate back and slumped down to rest his forehead on the table. “Suddenly I don’t know what’s going on anymore or even what I’m feeling. What if. What if this—this thing, these feelings I have about Nessiah are just like it was with Leon.”

“So what’s wrong with that?” Siskier said. “You and Leon being a thing was really good for both of you. He calmed down and got his head screwed back on the right way, and you helped each other through stuff. There’s nothing to be ashamed of about having a relationship that’s mostly about healing. Although—” When Gulcasa looked back up, she was popping a macaron into her mouth. “—I _do_ think that you and Nessiah are, or will be, a little different from how you and Leon were,” she said after swallowing.

“How?”

“I can’t really explain it,” she said. “Just trust me, though.”

He sighed. “I just, when I think about the party, and when I think that I want to help Yggdra—I get really, really confused. I don’t know what I actually feel about Yggdra, herself. I don’t know how much of—of liking Nessiah is because of his situation, and when I think that maybe—”

And then he cut himself off, because Siskier was laughing at him.

“I don’t know what’s funny about this,” he said.

“It’s funny because you don’t actually have to figure everything out right now,” she told him. “Maybe you love Nessiah because he’s messed-up and vulnerable and you have a nurturing streak that’s like half the country wide! And then when he’s feeling better your feelings will change. There’s nothing wrong with that, like I said. Maybe you love Nessiah for other reasons! Maybe it is The Big Love, The True Love, the Hollywood and/or romance paperback edition. Maybe it’s not either of these things. No matter what, there’s no guarantee that you’ll keep loving him Forever And Always. It’s totally possible, but then it might not work out. This is all totally okay! You can take your time figuring it out, there’s no deadline on this stuff.

“And as for Yggdra—well, it is actually a hundred percent possible to be attracted to multiple specimens of the human race at once. If you’re actually attracted to her, and this isn’t your protective instincts blotting out your ability to reason. Both of these things are okay too! I promise you that they really are.

“Especially because once we’re done taking care of the issue at hand, you’re all going to have a long, long time to figure out your feelings and romantic prospects. But we have to take care of the issue at hand first. Take things one damsel in distress at a time, Prince Charming.”

“I don’t know how Nessiah and Yggdra would feel about being called distressed damsels,” Gulcasa said. “I don’t know how _I_ feel about being called Prince Charming. God, I am so fucking confused.”

Siskier looked up at the ceiling, tapping her chin with a forefinger. “Or maybe you’re just polyamorous. Also a totally valid option.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m not,” said Gulcasa.

“Okay, then you’re not,” Siskier agreed, and shrugged. “Anyhow, this is still something that you can worry about _after_ we get Yggdra help while making sure Nessiah’s out of Alanjame’s reach the whole time. Understand?”

“Yeah,” said Gulcasa.

“Good. Now sit up and eat your sandwich or I’m gonna steal it.”

Gulcasa sat up and moved his plate back out of Siskier’s reach. He took a drink of his coffee, eyeing her over the rim of the lid the whole time.

Siskier smiled at him. “If we’re done with panicking over romance, should we get back to the main topic?”

“Yeah, go ahead,” he said, and covered his embarrassment by taking a healthy bite of sandwich. It was still warm, and very good besides.

“So, it looks like Yggdra wound up with Alanjame for similar reasons to Nessiah, e.g. family politics or whatever,” said Siskier. The atmosphere felt cold again at the return to serious subject matter. Gulcasa took another long drink of coffee and a bite of sandwich in an attempt to warm up, and felt his heartbeat quicken. “Her parents are overseas—they have been for a year, and will be for another two—to promote the Artwaltz name all over Europe and to make business connections. Yggdra’s a minor, so she went to stay with the totally trustworthy family friend instead of a relative or getting to live in the big Artwaltz mansion all by herself.”

“Shit, that’s right.” Gulcasa set the sandwich down to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Now that you mention it, I do remember hearing that once or twice.”

“Yggdra herself is still out in public and there doesn’t seem to be any change in her routine,” Siskier went on. “I’m saying this based on how there’s no local media speculation, since the Artwaltzes are public figures and it’d be safe to take a poke at them if anything seemed really weird, and that some degree of attendance records are visible on her high school’s website. Yggdra is still on record as having perfect attendance, so she’s at least still going to school, and she did show up at the party you were at.”

“And no one’s noticed anything, and for whatever reason, she’s not approaching others for help,” Gulcasa said. “Shit.”

“Or she’s approached others for help and she wasn’t believed, and word hasn’t reached public ears,” Siskier added.

Gulcasa narrowed his eyes. “Yeah. Unfortunately, there are any number of ways abusers can fuck with a victim’s head to keep them from asking for help or trying to escape—you should’ve seen Nessiah freaking out and trying to run back to throw himself on the sword for Yggdra the other day. Hell, you should’ve seen _me,_ back before I got brought to the shelter. If Emilia hadn’t intervened—and in her state, that was next to a miracle.” He let out a low, shaky breath. “If she’s not presenting really obviously, people aren’t going to go out of their way to try to notice. Even if she is presenting really obviously, they might go out of their way to cover their eyes to it. People are shits. Your average citizen doesn’t want to see abuse, because it’s just going to make _them_ uncomfortable.”

Siskier made a face. Then she reached across the table and extracted a slice of bacon protruding from the side of Gulcasa’s sandwich. He glared at her.

“You need to not do that,” he said, since she was already chowing down on his bacon.

“On topic, though—that’s basically what’s going on. You should still read over everything in private so that you can see everything in detail and make your own notes, but what I just told you is the basic gist of the situation.”

Gulcasa nodded in thanks and finished the rest of his sandwich. “Okay,” he said at last, “is there any way to get in contact with the parents, or is it not going to be that easy?”

“Easy, he says, as if it will be a piece of cake to convince the rich and sheltered that their buddy is abusing their daughter.” Siskier rolled her eyes demonstratively. “But, no, there’s no way to contact them aside from company email, and I’m not sure how trustworthy that’s going to be. Give us time and we can try to track them down, but short of asking family members how to talk to them…”

“…Which would open up whole new cans of worms, which has Bad Idea written all over it,” Gulcasa finished. “Right. But do try to track them down. I guess I’ll follow up with the police. And since Yggdra’s still in the public view, I guess we can try to work that angle too—try to contact her and let her know that she’s got people who’ll back her up if she wants to try reporting him.”

“We’ve got to have our big guns ready for that if we decide to take that route, though,” Siskier pointed out. “And we’ll need someplace for Nessiah to go just in case.”

“Nineteen’s old enough that he won’t be treated as a minor though, right?”

“We can’t be sure,” Siskier told him. “I’d have to check with Jenon and maybe Eudy, but if Nessiah’s still being counted as a legal dependant he might not be technically emancipated yet. But we’ll look up local law and see what things come into play at eighteen and at twenty-one.”

“Shit.” Gulcasa picked up his cup of coffee and pulled the lid off for the sake of something to do with his hands. “This is gonna suck. This is really, really gonna suck, isn’t it.”

“It sure isn’t going to be easy,” Siskier agreed. “But, hey, it’ll at least feel better than not doing anything and lying around guiltily. And you’re also not a one-man rescue squad here. We’re all with you.”

He set the coffee down. “Part of me feels like I should be apologizing for that, for dragging everyone else into all the potential trouble here.”

Siskier smiled at him. “Hey, wanna know a secret? You’re not dragging us in against our will. We care about you, and a lot of us are either dealing with our own issues still or have watched you dealing with yours enough that we think saving abuse victims is important too! We’ve got your back, and we’re happy to be here.”

Gulcasa looked down at the table. “…Thanks.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.” He popped the lid back onto the cup. “Since I’m done eating, I guess I’ll go. I’m gonna take the long way back—try to decompress a little. Nessiah’s sensitive to when people around him are in a mood, and if I’m still like this I’ll be in no state to referee the girls if they’re still arguing over school shit.”

Siskier nodded. “Okay. Take care, then. I’ll call to check in tomorrow. Don’t hesitate to call people if you need help, you hear?”

“Yeah.” He stood up and pulled his coat back on, slipping the file folder underneath it and tucking his umbrella under his arm. There wasn’t all that much coffee left, so he drank the remainder and crumpled the cup in his hand. “Thanks for today, and for all your hard work on such short notice.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she replied. “And hey, Zilva and Elena deserve more thanks than me. They did all the legwork, I just sat down and trawled the internet for a while.”

“Even so.” Gulcasa smiled and nodded to her. He turned on his heel and threw the crumpled cup into a nearby trash can. As soon as it dropped into the basket, he headed for the door.

“Gulcasa,” Siskier yelled from behind him.

He stopped and turned around.

“Go pay for your food,” she said, pointing at the counter with her arm outstretched. Medoute was leaned forward on it, staring at him with a bland expression and her face propped in both hands.

 _“Shit,”_ said Gulcasa with feeling. Face starting to heat up, he went to go settle the bill.


	3. legacy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _(getting your sleeve wet_ – how does the me inside of you laugh?)

“You should probably take a break,” the instructor said, and so Yggdra wiped her face off on her wrist brace, picked up her water bottle, and ducked out of the dance room.

She refilled the bottle at a water fountain, shifting her weight from one foot to the other impatiently, and then walked briskly into the next room over, which was full of mats and gymnastics equipment. She wanted—needed to be able to occupy her mind, and so couldn’t afford to head down the hall into the room with weight equipment and exercise machines. Those were both a tough workout, but they were mindless. Yggdra would have to concentrate while tumbling and walking the balance beam—she was a dancer, not a gymnast; these were warm-up exercises to her.

And actually taking the proffered break to do something to work only her mind was not an option either. If she did not push her body to its limits, she wouldn’t be able to shake the desire to peel away her own skin.

There were a few children working on some of the easier equipment, as well as some middle-school-aged kids practicing jumps into a foam pit. One of the mats was taken up by some twenty or so girls Yggdra’s age or older in fencing gear, doing drills with rubber caps on the tips of their foils. The remainder of the gymnastics room was free.

Yggdra walked over to a balance beam, untied and slipped out of her pointe shoes, and gripped the beam with both hands. She put power into her shoulders and wrists to lift herself up, and strained the muscles of her stomach until she had pushed her body up into a handstand, hips and feet wavering just a little. Hair falling down messily all around her face and arms, she carefully lowered her feet onto the beam and stood up.

She knew she was wobbling even as she lifted herself onto the balls of her feet, and it annoyed her. This was a different kind of balance than pointe required, but she wasn’t so out of shape that she shouldn’t be able to do some simple beam exercises.

She walked back and forth across the beam, slowly, then pacing, weight more on her toes than on the whole of her feet. Once she felt more stable, she tried a slow cartwheel. She didn’t even have to check her balance straightening out of it. Emboldened—was the wrong word; it was more like a rush of anger that made Yggdra fling her body forward, arms out. She grabbed the bar and kicked off with all her power—and her feet slipped on the landing, sending her whole back slamming against the bar. The pain—like a knife in every bruise—made her gasp and her hands lose their grip, and she fell again to the floor, sprawled out on her back, gazing up at the pipes and bars that crossed the distant ceiling.

The lights above her made her dizzy to stare at them, but it was the surge of nausea from being on her back that made Yggdra push herself up a moment later, springing onto her feet. Breathing quickly, smarting all over, she strode quickly over to the uneven bars—paused halfway to go pick up her shoes—and returned, depositing the shoes by the tall pot of chalk dust. She dipped her fingers in, rubbed them together even though the dusty sensation made her skin crawl, and moved to stand before the lower bar. She grabbed it, pushed herself up, and then let her body drop as dizziness assailed her again.

Her legs wanted to fold. She allowed them, and sat heavily, bracing her body with both hands on the floor at either side of her hips.

Distantly, she registered the clatter of the foils dying down, and she turned her chin to stare blankly at the fencing class. Their drill must have ended, as they were sinking out of their stances and turning to one another to chatter in soft voices, a senseless burble to Yggdra’s tired ears.

One girl, part of the pair who had been standing in front to lead the drill, pulled her mask off and set it on the floor to reveal dark eyes and long strawberry blond hair in a messy braid. Something of the colors reminded Yggdra powerfully of her mother, and she felt her face redden, shame stinging at her eyes. Her parents—would be disgusted with her, surely. She knew that much without having to be told, and her uncle _did_ go out of his way to tell her so, at night, when she was sweaty and aching, with her face—dripping. This didn’t happen to good girls.

Yggdra’s stomach roiled. The urge to get back up, to keep moving, to push her body and push it and push it until she fell apart like a poorly-maintained machine, built in her legs like burning springs. But when she tried to stand, her limbs wouldn’t support her. She closed her eyes. Something was dripping down the sides of her face and sticking her shirt to her back. Judging from the consistency, it was sweat.

“Are you all right?” said a voice, and she opened her eyes to look up.

It was the fencing girl, orangey-gold hair loose around her face, peering down at her with blue eyes.

Yggdra cast her gaze down to the mat and tried to swallow. Her mouth was dry. She folded her lower lip into her mouth, breathing in through her nose. “I believe so. I just got a bit caught up, I think.”

A rustle of fabric. The fencing girl was crouching down on her knees and toes, hands splayed along her thighs. “Do you have anything for hydration? Your face is awfully red. You might overheat and pass out if you don’t get something cold to drink and stabilize your temperature.”

Yggdra lifted one arm with an effort, flapping her hand limply. “I think I left my water bottle over there,” she said, indicating the balance beams.

Fencing girl stood up wordlessly and padded over the mats to the beams. She bent over, scooped up Yggdra’s water bottle, and shook it.

“This is already lukewarm,” she said. “If you can stand, come with me, I’ll get you something from one of the vending machines.”

“You don’t have to,” Yggdra said.

“I want to,” said the fencing girl rather firmly. “You remind me so much of my brother that it’s impossible to let you be. Give me a moment, I’m going to tell my sister and the others where I’m going. And you mustn’t stand up too quickly, or you might faint.”

With that, she set the water bottle down and went back off to her classmates. Yggdra pulled the bottle towards her and unscrewed the top, sipping more for the sake of hydration than because she consciously felt thirsty. She watched as fencing girl spoke to another girl the same height as her, who—Yggdra saw as she took her mask off—had the same blond hair, as well. They must be twins, Yggdra thought; without their different hairstyles there would be no way to tell them apart.

Yggdra tipped the bottle back and noticed that there was nothing left in it.

“Do you think you’re all right standing up?” said fencing girl’s voice, and Yggdra flinched a little.

“Yes,” she said at length, and fencing girl extended a hand. Yggdra grasped it and pulled herself to her feet. Fencing girl didn’t let go, pulling Yggdra along as she started walking towards the tall doors that led to the hall.

“My shoes,” Yggdra tried to protest, but fencing girl shook her head.

“It’s just a bit of tile,” she said. “You’ll be all right.”

There was a vending machine very close by, and the girl didn’t let go of Yggdra until they were standing front of it. Yggdra suspected that this was only because it would have been difficult to mess with her wallet one-handed.

“Pick anything you’d like,” said the girl, “though obviously I would prefer you buy something healthy.”

Yggdra looked blankly at the vending machine. It started to occur to her to refuse the girl’s offer, but that would be stupid, here in front of the machine with the girl feeding bills in, even if the kindness really was wasted on her. The machine offered quite a lot of Gatorade as well as a few different kinds of fruit juice. There wasn’t anything strawberry-flavored, and so Yggdra picked a cheap apple juice. There was a thunk as the juice bottle hit the tray, making Yggdra jump again, and a clatter of change being dispensed. Yggdra fished out the bottle, and the girl extracted the coins, tucking them back into her wallet and putting the wallet itself back into her sweatpants pocket. Yggdra tugged at the cap, dusted her chalky fingers off on her leggings, and then tried again. It opened this time.

Fencing girl watched as Yggdra drank the juice and wondered a little why she was being so obedient for this stranger, who couldn’t be more than one or two years older than her. Perhaps she’d just been conditioned to obedience over the past few months so that she’d bow down to anyone firm with her. But no, that didn’t feel right; otherwise she would have obeyed her dance instructor too, instead of trying to work out some of the churning feeling inside her.

It was probably just that this girl felt like she’d always imagined a sister ought to: Knowledgeable and sensible and kind. That this girl had a twin. Yggdra put the cap back on the bottle and sighed.

“Come back to the gym,” said the girl. “We should go ahead and get your shoes.”

“Why?” said Yggdra, and the girl looked at her as though mystified.

“You look dead on your feet,” the girl said. “I’m taking you to the breakfast and café place next door. I’ll admit that I don’t know as much about your situation and maybe I’m not in the best place to judge, but when my brother used to do what you were doing—working himself into a state of collapse out of some fugue or other—he used to skip meals too. Either way, I think you’ll feel better if you eat something.”

“But my ballet class,” said Yggdra, her eyes widening.

The girl cocked her head to the side. “Will the instructor be wanting you back by the end of it?”

“I don’t know,” Yggdra admitted, “but—I think that probably she would want me to check in, at least.”

“It shouldn’t take that long to eat,” said the girl, “but let’s let them know just in case.”

They returned to the gym, and Yggdra put her pointe shoes back on, tying them securely. She glanced back at the fencing class, which was going back to drills; the girl’s sister was leading them by herself now.

“Is is really all right to leave without telling your sister?”

“I already told her I’d be taking you out,” said the girl. “There’s no need to worry, Luciana won’t have any problems looking after the others—she’s the team captain, so she’s always in charge of them. She just had me partnering her to show some of the counters in action, was all.”

Yggdra pointed out the dance room, and they opened the door cautiously. The other dancers were doing repeated leg lifts on the bar, and so the instructor came right over when she beckoned. When the girl apologized and said that she would be borrowing this particular ballerina for a bit, the instructor bid them go ahead—said that Yggdra could stand to have someone forcing her to rest.

After that, they passed by the locker rooms, where Yggdra retrieved her jacket and cell phone just in case. The girl put away her fencing equipment in her own locker, as well, and they left the health center.

“My name is Aegina, by the way,” she said, and offered her hand.

Yggdra clasped her hand gingerly. “I’m Yggdra.”

 

 

Not fifteen minutes later they were sitting across from each other in a restaurant booth with a plate of fresh-baked madeleines between them. Fencing girl—Aegina had a mug of steaming coffee whose handle she tapped at idly as she looked at her menu; Yggdra wrapped her hand around her tall glass of iced tea and peered over her own.

“Why?” she said, again. “Why all of this, I mean. I can understand buying a drink a dehydrated stranger, but taking one out for lunch is a little—quite unusual.”

Aegina set her menu down. “Well, I’ve already said that you remind me so much of my brother in all his self-destructive glory that I couldn’t let you be. And… I suppose that his altruism is rubbing off on me, a little. Now that we’re here, it strikes me that he would have done the same. He loves to take care of everyone except himself, does my brother. It would be admirable if he didn’t regularly push himself into a state of near collapse; as it is he just makes everyone around him worry. If our parents were still alive they might be able to exert some control over him, but a chorus of three little sisters all giving him the same warnings doesn’t mean much to him, it looks like.”

Yggdra couldn’t help but smile a little. “He sounds like a bit of a handful.”

“He’s a good person, but yes, he is quite a handful.” Aegina dropped her gaze, smiling back. “Have you decided what you’d like to order? Everything on the breakfast menu is good, as are the desserts.”

“No.” Yggdra gave her menu a glance, but even if she’d had the heart to concentrate on it, the letters seemed to swim before her eyes. “I don’t… you’re paying, so you can order whatever is in your price range. I wouldn’t like to trouble you any more.”

“If it were trouble, I wouldn’t have invited you,” said Aegina, “and listen to me, I’m just morphing into Gulcasa with every word that comes out of my mouth. I’ll order for you if you like. Is there anything that you can’t eat? What do you like? And do you have any calorie restrictions?”

“Mushrooms would be the only thing.” Yggdra sighed and leaned back, closing her eyes. “I’m partial to strawberries. And really, you can just order whatever.”

“If you wanted something that has mushrooms in, you could always give them to me, I quite like them,” Aegina said mildly. “Well, in the interest of getting some protein into you, I think I’ll get you the daily special—the crab omelet, I mean. The usual side dish is hash browns but they’ll let you exchange it for a strawberry crepe. I’m going to get the pumpkin and walnut pancakes with fruit toppings, and I will be having the hash browns; feel free to try some of my food if it looks appetizing, I know I’ll be stealing a few bits of yours. Does that sound all right?”

Yggdra nodded. It sounded delicious; this made her feel oddly guilty. She shouldn’t be sitting here, in this fairly adorable little hole-in-the-wall shop with its adorable checkered tablecloths and Beethoven playing faintly over the speakers; she shouldn’t be costing a nice normal girl like Aegina money.

“You look very pale now,” Aegina said. “Please, eat a madeleine before you pass out.”

Yggdra took a long drink of her tea and picked a pastry off the plate to nibble at. It was warm and sweet, and after she had eaten a second one she felt a little less awful.

Several minutes passed in relative quiet, except for Aegina ordering their respective lunches. Once the waitperson had left, Yggdra looked up at Aegina again. Aegina was staring down at her cell phone, sending a text message.

Yggdra waited until she was done and had put the phone away before asking, “Is it nice, having siblings?”

“Sometimes it’s very nice,” Aegina said. “Sometimes it’s quite awful. Luciana—my twin sister, and my younger sister Emilia, they were giving me a horrid time when it was still end-of-term season for us three. Sometimes our brother tried to referee, or his boyfriend, but the former of those two works late hours and the other’s a little shy around people who are arguing. I think I seriously considered moving to a friend’s house until things were over, so I could have a minor breakdown from the stress in peace. But I guess that overall it’s nice, family. Especially since our parents passed away.”

She looked at Yggdra very expectantly.

“I’m sorry—that was prying, wasn’t it.”

“Goodness, of course not. If I didn’t want to share, I wouldn’t have.” Aegina fiddled with the end of her braid; Yggdra watched her, not wanting to look her in the eyes. “Besides—the more you know about me, the less we’ll feel like strangers, and then you won’t need to feel so awkward about the free lunch.”

Yggdra had to smile. Probably Aegina had intended it. “It’s just that—I’ve always been a little curious. And it’s that you have a twin, I think. I’m—saying that I’m an only child isn’t quite correct, even though I’ve never in my life had siblings. My parents had children before me, but they died while they were still in the hospital, right after they were born. My mother and father don’t like to talk about it. I’ve never even known their names, just that they were twin girls.

“So while I’ve never _had_ siblings, I’ve sort of—grown up with their ghosts. When I was younger I thought a lot about the could-have-beens, and I guess it still gets my attention even now.”

When she raised her chin to look directly at Aegina, the other girl had her chin propped in her hands and was watching her with a strange seriousness.

“Were you lonely?”

Yggdra considered this.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t think that it occurred to me to be lonely, at least until recently. I had my parents—but they aren’t around now. They’re overseas on business. I wish that they hadn’t gone.”

She frowned once the words had left her lips, a bit surprised at herself. That hadn’t really occurred to her before, but now that she had said it she knew that it was true.

Aegina lifted her coffee cup and sipped from it. When she put it down she picked up a madeleine, eating it in slow bites. It looked to Yggdra as though she was ruminating over something, perhaps casting about mentally for a response.

“It’s a bit silly of me,” she said at last, “to be glad that your feelings about family are complicated as well. Luciana is my only blood relative, you see. The two of us—and Gulcasa and Emilia as well—we were adopted. Gulcasa and Emilia’s parents were—” she narrowed her eyes a bit, searching for a word— “not the kind of parents I would wish on anyone, but they know where they came from. Which isn’t to say that they haven’t had worries specifically because of knowing, but… Luciana and I were literally what you’d call doorstep babies. So we’ve done our own fair share of wondering where we came from, what reasons our parents had for abandoning us.

“The family that we have now isn’t something I would trade for anything. But all the same, it’s very lonely sometimes not knowing.”

Both of them fell quiet for a while after that, an air that was not quite awkward but not comfortable by any means either. Thankfully, their waitperson arrived to provide a distraction in the form of their food: For Aegina, a large platter of orangey-brown pancakes topped with fruit and whipped cream, grated potatoes and strips of bacon crowded along the sliver that was not covered in pancake; for Yggdra, one plate bearing a fluffy-looking, folded-over omelet and a smaller second one bearing a crepe that bulged with slices of fresh strawberry. Yggdra unfolded her napkin and spread it over her lap, picked up her utensils, and forked off a bit of crepe. It was delicious.

They ate without talking for a while. As she had promised—forewarned?—Aegina reached across the table with her fork to pick off a bit of Yggdra’s omelet, and didn’t protest when Yggdra speared a raspberry from atop her pancakes.

“This is very good,” Yggdra said at last, setting down her utensils along the edge of the plate. “I know you’d rather I wouldn’t, but I can’t help but feel guilty that you’re treating me to all this.”

Aegina tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, swallowed the bite of pancake she’d been chewing, and said lightly, “Then you’ll just have to treat me too someday.”

Yggdra must have looked surprised, because Aegina laughed, raising a hand to her mouth. “Well, if your ballet lessons are on a regular schedule, then we’ll both be in the same gym at least once a week. Our fencing team’s going to be practicing there all winter and probably spring too, we tend to get chased out of our school gymnasium by the marching band even though we’ve won many more awards than them.”

“I don’t know how much we’ll be running into each other, but that is good to hear,” Yggdra said. “Perhaps if we get more chances to speak to each other, this won’t feel quite so odd.”

They returned to their respective meals for a few more minutes, the atmosphere a bit softer.

“…I’m going to mimic my brother and be pushy for a moment,” said Aegina all of a sudden. Yggdra set her knife down and looked back across the table. “I don’t want to force you to explain why you were taking your stress out on your own body back there, but I do want you to tell me in the future if you need help. Pass me your phone,” she said, and held out her hand. Bemused, Yggdra reached out and placed it in Aegina’s palm. Aegina opened it up and began to manipulate the keys. “I’m going to put my number in your contacts list. You can delete it if you want. But for now it’s there. If you’re in an emergency situation, if you don’t feel safe, if there’s no one else you can tell, call me. Please. I know it probably sounds presumptuous, but we have—experience with that kind of thing, in my family.”

She set Yggdra’s phone down on the table and slid it across. Yggdra picked it up and pocketed it with fingers that shook.

The way Aegina was looking at her—serious, somehow almost desperate—made Yggdra feel like she _knew,_ somehow. But that was impossible. They were strangers, they had just met for the first time today. There was no plausible way.

Then Aegina smiled, playing with her braid again. “God, I’m sorry. I must sound so outrageous. Altruism is a terrible disease to catch, believe you me.”

Yggdra giggled weakly and returned her attention to her food. She was overthinking things. Aegina was kind, that was all.

 

 

By the time they returned, the members of Aegina’s fencing class were heading to the lockers in a swarm. Aegina waved to Yggdra and fell into step with her sister, who stared curiously in Yggdra’s direction over Aegina’s shoulder.

Since she wasn’t sweating or dehydrated, the dance instructor let Yggdra finish out the last fifteen minutes of the lesson. She sucked her stomach in and twisted her body into a high arabesque, trying very hard to turn her mind off, to forget that she was attached to her body. Her cell phone, tucked into her locker, kept popping into her mind and making it difficult.

Once the class was over and the other ballerinas had dispersed, once Yggdra was walking down the hall with hands in her jacket pockets and her gaze tracing tiles on the floor, she realized. She had heard the name Gulcasa somewhere before—she was sure of it. But she couldn’t for the life of her remember where.


	4. ordinary life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _(nothing to write about but radishes_ – today I stopped in my tracks and knelt down, touching the petals)

Nessiah did not recognize the woman Gulcasa led into the dining room at first—the only time he’d seen her, at the disastrous party, she had worn her hair in elaborate buns and had been using some kind of subtle makeup to accent her heavy eyelids and the corners of her eyes. She’d been wearing a beautiful red and gold dress, too, with the kinds of colors and glitter that would have made Nessiah’s already pale coloring look sickly.

Today she had her hair yanked into a ponytail above her left ear, with a waterfall braid looped around the back of her head. Strings of plastic beads dangled from the sides of her glasses, which were crooked over the bridge of her long nose. She didn’t wear makeup; she had a canvas bag hanging off her shoulder by frayed straps, there were hand-sewn patches and what looked like oil stains on her jeans, and her faded Bill Nye t-shirt was slowly being dragged down her shoulder by the strap of the bag. There were ink marks on her right temple and next to the same eyebrow, the telltale sign of someone who tended to rest their face along their hand or scratch their head without bothering to put their uncapped pen down.

Perhaps noting Nessiah’s consternation, Gulcasa glanced back and forth from him to the woman. “You met for all of five minutes before, so just for the sake of things—Nessiah, this is Eudy; Eudy, this is Nessiah. I mentioned it to you before, but Eudy’s our…” He paused to turn and look at Eudy, who was waiting with her eyebrows raised. “Half-tame rocket scientist.”

“Chemist and head of tech department _and_ programmer and finance book cooker,” Eudy appended, pushing her glasses up on her nose. The beads swayed. “Because you lot may have basic people skills, but you couldn’t fix a computer or make a home-brewed calculating program if your lives depended on it.”

“Catch-all science and math person,” Gulcasa amended. He turned back to Eudy. “Like I said before, Nessiah’s the one who caught that bookkeeping error—and he’s apparently got all kinds of fancy theoretical math degrees, so my best case scenario is that once we’ve successfully stumbled through this maze of red tape, we can get him on the math side of things so that you’ll have more time to devote to making things explode.”

Nessiah wondered a little if Gulcasa was teasing her in that gentle way of his, but Eudy pushed her glasses up again and said, “I would appreciate that, thanks, I haven’t seriously blown up anything bigger than a beaker in ages.”

She was smirking. Maybe it was a joke.

“As long as things stay civil, though, you’re welcome to stay for dinner,” Gulcasa told her. “God knows you’d just go home and heat up condensed soup on the Bunsen burner otherwise.”

“I haven’t done that since I was in college,” Eudy replied. Her smile was crooked, the left corner of her mouth rising higher than the right, making a dimple form in her left cheek. Her eyebrows kept rising higher. What a good expression, Nessiah thought. “I was going to order Chinese or something. But I’ll happily save my money if you would rather cook for me.”

“We’re having matzo ball soup, so yes, stay.” Gulcasa was already drifting in the direction of the kitchen, pushing his sleeves up. “The recipe tends to make more than five people could eat without leaving leftovers for a couple days, and any soup broth is better fresh.”

Eudy turned back towards Nessiah. He dropped his gaze automatically. When he glanced back up at her, she was pointing at Gulcasa’s back.

“Actual best boss,” she said, grinning around the words. “As long as you’re going to work for somebody and not yourself, you may as well work for someone who’ll make you delicious food.”

Nessiah smiled a little automatically. Eudy made little finger guns in his direction, but left out any audible _pew pew_ s. She dumped her bag unceremoniously on the floor, then went to sit down on the sofa. She looked at Nessiah expectantly. When he just stared at her blankly, she patted the cushion to her right in an ostentatious sort of way—at least considering that this wasn’t her house.

Still unsure of his footing with this new person, Nessiah hesitantly sat. They were a little more than arm’s length apart: At least she had given him _space._ He also wondered a little if it was just luck that she hadn’t put herself on his blind side, or if Gulcasa had warned her before her arrival.

“Now,” Eudy said, shifting to rest her arm along the back of the sofa and propping her face up with that hand, “if you like mathematics nearly as much as your degrees suggest, you must’ve been awful lonely in a house like this one. Everyone here breaks out in hives at the very word _math.”_

“Gross exaggeration,” Gulcasa called from the kitchen. Nessiah twisted one way, then the other to see him. “Who do you think checks your paperwork, here?”

“That’s for your _job,”_ Eudy pointed out. “It’s not like you do it because you actually enjoy it.”

“Fucking A,” Gulcasa said calmly.

“Well, there you have it.” Nessiah turned back to see Eudy folding her arms with a self-satisfied sort of expression. “But as I was saying before some top chef wannabe interrupted—”

“What is _that_ supposed to mean?” Gulcasa asked, laughing.

“Means that twenty, thirty years from now when you decide to step down as president, you’re totally going to open a restaurant or something and it’s going to be the best small business in town and you’re going to love every minute of it. People may approach you with a reality TV show deal based on your skill. You’ll probably tell them no.”

“Sure,” Gulcasa said. It was a dismissal, but an amused one.

“Anyway.” Eudy rolled her eyes and pushed her glasses up on her nose, making the beads sway back and forth again. “As I was _saying,_ you must be lonely without anyone to talk to about math.”

Nessiah looked down at his hands. “Actually, it’s—not as though I’ve really tried to hold a conversation about theoretical mathematics with anyone. Ever. It’s—my college courses were all done via correspondence, so. I mean, I help out Emilia with her homework but that’s different.”

When he looked back up, Eudy’s eyebrows were drawing rusty arches over the frames of her glasses. “Oh, that’s no good,” she said. “What do you even _do_ in this house all day, just rattle around it like some old fifties B-movie spinster?”

“There are books. I don’t really like to go out alone, so I have everyone take things out of the library for me. And there’s the Internet, and I’m teaching myself really basic cooking so that I can help pull my own weight a little. I already mentioned that I do some informal tutoring. And—I don’t actually play video games, but it’s nice to watch Emilia play them.”

Eudy narrowed her eyes, but her eyebrows didn’t come back down. “Is Gulcasa aware that he’s just letting you bore yourself to death in this house?”

“Oh—but, I like it here. I’m used to having to stay indoors. And I can relax in this house.”

“That’s pitiful,” Eudy informed him. She strained up in her seat. “Gulcasa, this is pitiful. A young person needs the chance to interact with others.”

“I don’t want to hear that from you,” Gulcasa said back. “Not when you like to lock yourself up in your lab for months at a time and not meet anybody except to hand in reports and get fast food from your gofers.”

_“I,”_ Eudy said snippily, “am a scientist. And I can go out and meet people any time I like. I _do_ go out and meet with people whenever I feel like it.”

“We have guests,” Nessiah offered. It would be difficult to get a word in edgewise here. The easy banter that Gulcasa fell into with all his friends was intimidating in its snappy rhythm and familiarity. Nessiah felt rather as though he was a spectator at a tennis match.

“But are you going to get a chance to cut your inner nerd loose around any of them? I think not,” Eudy told him loftily. “But! I am here now. This will all change forthwith. Let us debate. You may fly to my bosom at your own convenience.” She spread her arms wide helpfully.

Nessiah felt himself wanting to smile again. He got the impression that she was purposely laying the silliness on thick so that he would feel at ease, and it was working. “One thing,” he ventured.

“Name it, my young comrade of the sciences,” Eudy said. The seriousness of her breathy tone was ruined a bit by her smile.

“I—um. There’s no real delicate way to put this. I’m not—I prefer men, so—”

Eudy tilted her head to the side. “Relevance?”

Nessiah examined her through his hair. “Weren’t you flirting?”

“Well, _honestly.”_ She tilted her head to the other side, expression blank and puzzled. “That’s not the kind of flirting I was aiming for.”

“You’re a little different from her type anyway,” Gulcasa put in. “Eudy likes pretty boys, yeah, but she tends to go for peacocks with long hair and fashion sense from the latest young heirs’ fashion magazines.”

“He’s exaggerating,” Eudy informed Nessiah. “My taste isn’t _that_ expensive.”

“Then—”

“If one day we’re going to work together,” Eudy told him in a much kinder tone, “it would be ideal if we could become good enough friends to wax Shakespearean about our passions together.”

“Oh.” Nessiah lifted his chin a few millimeters, the better to consider her. At the least, she was an interesting person. It seemed like it would be difficult to be bored around her, from one thing to another.

“Yes, oh,” Eudy said. “Now, talk dirty to me, by which I mean: Let us discuss math.”

“Math,” Nessiah said.

“Math,” Eudy agreed.

 

 

They talked about math. It was probably a sign of how deeply into the conversation Nessiah got that he didn’t even notice the smell of dinner until Gulcasa came into the family room to actually say “Okay, enough summoning the elder gods with the powers of calculus or whatever, it’s time to eat.”

“I’d hardly call it _summoning the elder gods,”_ said Eudy loftily. “Where do you even get that?”

“Like, my presumption is that that discussion was still about math, but once you get past basic algebra and geometry it all sounds like Iä Iä Fhtagn to me,” Gulcasa said, and shrugged.

“It was only game theory and intermediate calculus,” Nessiah said. He couldn’t keep the amusement out of his voice.

Gulcasa just shrugged again. “I’m just gonna have to take your word on that. Never could keep anything not necessary to logistics actually in my head. I can’t comprehend the true form.”

“You would be a _terrible_ mathematician,” Eudy said fondly.

“Seeing as listening in on you two meant I had to throw a saving roll on my SAN, I agree with you on that one. Now, come on. It’s nice you’re engrossed, but these fresh matzo balls aren’t going to eat themselves.”

“Only for your matzo balls,” said Eudy. “It’s been so long since I’ve talked to someone near to my own level with this stuff that I wouldn’t stop for anything else.”

“Flatterer,” Gulcasa said, and held a hand out. Nessiah took it to pull himself up.

It took a few minutes for Gulcasa to gather the girls, which gave Nessiah the opportunity to choose a spot that would keep anyone from being fully on his blind side. If Eudy noticed his maneuvering, she didn’t comment; Gulcasa, Emilia, and the twins, all used to it, picked their own seats without fuss.

“How are things going on the undercover spy front?” Gulcasa asked.

_“Gulcasa,”_ Aegina said, and rolled her eyes at him. “I’d hardly call it undercover. We’ve exchanged phone numbers and spoken a few times. Most of our conversations have only gone as far as greetings. There are too many ways that this angle could go wrong, and so I certainly hope that you’re getting further.”

“I’m looming over the police as obtrusively as I can without getting told to bugger off, which is something,” Gulcasa said lightly. “I’d ask Siskier about the rest of it, but that either in closed quarters at work or in this house, just to be safe.”

“What, are we hoping that someone is going to pass the kid a copy of that how-to on disappearing completely?” Eudy asked.

“The problem is that even if that worked—and the Artwaltzes have got more money and resources than most, so if their princess suddenly vanishes they’ll go to more effort than your average bear to find her—the piece of shit’s just gonna look for some new kid to pick on. And he’ll escalate. I admit I’m not usually a fan of the whole overkill-is-the-only-option school of thought, but I want the asshole in a jail cell for the rest of his life.” Gulcasa shook his head and reached for his glass.

Nessiah shook his head too, and stared at his plate. “—I’ve told you, too, that cases like these—are often ignored. Rarely prosecuted. In all likelihood he’ll wiggle out of all charges.”

“And _I’ve_ told _you_ that that’s still no excuse for giving up before we try,” Gulcasa said steadily. “There’s no point in the power and influence that I have if I don’t use them to help others. We’re gonna make this work out, one way or another.”

“Yours is a happy nature,” Nessiah said.

“People compliment me on it, it’s true. I hope it’s catching, but if it’s not, the least I can do is use it to balance out your cynicism.”

Eudy, who had her elbows on the table, watched this exchange with interest.

“I can lend you a blowtorch if you want,” she said innocently.

_“Eudy,”_ everyone but Nessiah exclaimed with varying degrees of amusement and exasperation. Emilia said it with delight.

“I’d offer to lend my Glock, but I don’t think any of you are licensed to carry firearms,” Eudy said. She had the most reasonable tone.

“That’s because I’d be scared to death handling a gun, and Luciana and Emilia couldn’t be trusted with one. _And_ all the girls are underage.”

“It would be pretty cool to have my own blowtorch,” Emilia said.

“No. A thousand times no. I am vetoing it forever,” Gulcasa said flatly.

“Why?” Emilia sulked.

“Because you’d become an arsonist in three seconds,” Gulcasa retorted. “Between you and Luciana, we have enough mayhem to go around with for a lifetime. No blowtorches. We want to land a piece of shit in prison and save the community from him, not land in jail for murder our own selves.”

“Don’t mind him,” Luciana said, scooting her chair over to put a solicitous arm around Emilia’s shoulders. “Your brother is a spoilsport.”

“I _know,_ and it _sucks,”_ said Emilia.

Nessiah ate a forked-off piece of matzo ball in order to hide that he was smiling.

 

 

“So what do you two think?” Gulcasa asked after dinner was cleared away and Emilia and the twins were making noise about ice cream in the kitchen.

“About what?”

_“Nessiah,”_ Gulcasa said, starting to laugh. “I thought the main reason Eudy even came over was so that we could feel out whether you two working together would be plausible or not.”

“Oh.” Nessiah thought about it for a moment, then turned to look at Eudy.

“He has my seal of approval, if that counts for anything,” Eudy said. She pushed her glasses up on her nose and ran her fingers through her ponytail. “Just let me train him up a bit and we’ll be undefeatable. You’ll have a pair of real-life Science Bros in your employ.”

“Somebody needs to limit your superhero movie intake,” Gulcasa said flatly.

“Why?” Eudy asked, not missing a beat.

“Because they always give you _ideas.”_

“Why would a scientist getting ideas be a bad thing?”

“Because the scientist is _you,”_ Gulcasa told her.

“Flatterer,” Eudy said.

“That wasn’t a compliment. Nessiah?”

Nessiah looked down, aware that his smile was still going to show. “I think—the arrangement will work just fine.”

“I see.” When Nessiah looked up, Gulcasa was smiling at him, head tilted to one side. “That’s pretty high praise.”

“You picked up a sensible one this time,” Eudy said. She looked pleased.

 

 

After, he and Eudy sat in the living room while Gulcasa washed dishes. Aegina had gone upstairs to work on an essay for her advanced literature class; Emilia was playing video games, with Luciana next to her, watching.

Nessiah had a notebook and was aimlessly drawing fractals to fill the lull in conversation. Eudy seemed content to let him be. When he looked up at her, she was staring into the kitchen. Apparently noticing his gaze on her, she turned towards him and pushed up her glasses in what struck him as a particularly conspiratorial fashion.

“You know he’s stuck on you,” she said. Her voice was so low, it wouldn’t carry out of the room, let alone be audible above the running water.

“What?”

Eudy considered him for a while. “I’d be telling you not to be so shocked, but really, how much experience would you have in this area? Allow me to rephrase: I’m pretty sure he’s stuck on you. Ninety percent chance, to err on the side of caution.”

Nessiah felt very curious. He shook his head once, then again. “No. Gulcasa is—why would you come to a conclusion like—”

“I was already wondering when I saw you two at the party,” she said. So conversational. You’d think they were still discussing spiral graphs and equations. She talked about numbers and chemicals with more passion—explosions brought her color up, but this kind of gossip, she related with a calm and casual voice that didn’t even seem schooled to such a tone. “Thing is, I know Gulcasa. I’ve known him since before he found out what his friend’s parents were up to and the whole debacle that landed him in the position he’s got. So I’ve known him long enough to see him go into and out of the more serious relationships he’s been in. That’s enough for a hunch.”

Nessiah shook his head. “Luciana—she insinuated—things, when Gulcasa brought me here. This is, it has to be the same. Which is to say, I don’t mean to be rude, but I think you’re probably mistaken.”

“Luciana still isn’t over the time Leon went on a drunken rampage in here,” Eudy said, nodding. “She’s protective of Gulcasa, so she’s suspicious of his judgment sometimes. And I can’t speak of when you first came here, but whether or not he was stuck on you then, I’m pretty sure he is _now,_ which is what matters.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“He’s aware of you in ways that he’s not usually conscious of people. And the way he smiles at you is different from the way he smiles at everyone else. He hasn’t tried to put moves on you, then?”

Nessiah just shook his head again, wordlessly. He was going to get dizzy, at this rate.

“Then he may be waiting to keep from complicating things until all this is over and done with,” Eudy mused. She didn’t need to elaborate on _all this._ “Or he could be worried about scaring you. I can’t tell you exactly what he’s thinking, let alone what—if anything—he plans to do about it, but he’s stuck on you.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Eudy tilted her head to the side. “Well, it’ll at least be a distraction from boredom, won’t it? If you’re not sure whether to believe me, you can watch him and judge for yourself. And you can take the time to decide if you’re interested. Or do you not like the idea of his being stuck on you?”

“I’m not sure.” Nessiah fell quiet for a moment, considering. He had only really gotten to know Eudy today, but this wasn’t something he could talk to Gulcasa’s sisters about. And while he was still nervous about a lot of things, he thought he could put at least a little faith in Gulcasa’s trust. So he took a breath. “He makes me feel safe. That’s already more than anyone else has done for me.”

“Would it make you feel less safe for him to think of you like that?”

He had to smile. “I’ve shared a room with him for—oh, months. And our backgrounds are similar. I don’t think I have anything to worry about, at least in regards to that.”

“That’s good.” Eudy continued to watch him. “But are you still doubting what I told you?”

“Mmm. I don’t mean to accuse you of lying. I’ve just never considered it, and it doesn’t make sense. Why me? I can’t think of any reason someone like him would be attracted to a person like me.”

“You don’t necessarily have to have a reason to be attracted to somebody,” Eudy pointed out. “More often than not, it’s just a feeling, and the reasons—analyzing what it was that attracts you—are things that we tack on to the topic afterwards, to make sense of it. But, Nessiah, don’t you have something just as important to consider here?”

“Such as?”

“Such as, what do _you_ think about _him?”_ Eudy pressed, starting to smile. She pushed her glasses up again, eyelids half-lowered, eyebrows drawing arches over them.

“I—” Nessiah began, and then fell silent. “That certainly is a question.”

Eudy patted his shoulder very lightly. “Think about it,” she said.


	5. oneroom cube

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _(in a world of one color_ – I had a dream inside my four-cornered world)

“You don’t want to push this any further,” the officer said.

Gulcasa looked him up and down. Everything about him was neat, from his short brown hair to his uniform to the fists he made.

“Don’t I,” said Gulcasa. “Because I really can’t think of this as somebody else’s problem. I really can’t. People in the position I was in need as many fighting for them as they can get.”

“Sir, I know your story just as well as everyone does,” said the police officer. He was a young man, maybe a few years older than Gulcasa—definitely still in his mid- or early twenties. He had one of the older styles of badge on his uniform, but it was shiny. Gulcasa couldn’t tell what all the pips and bars on the officer’s shoulders meant, just that they spoke of ardent service or money and power. “But I have to ask you—do you remember what court was like?”

Gulcasa raised his eyebrows. “The Albelts kept all the shelter kids out of court on principle. I think they thought we were traumatized enough already.”

The officer nodded. “I had an inkling that that might be the case. Sir, I will be honest with you. Even those of us who wish that pressure from _certain parties_ did not keep us from action in this case know that this course of action wouldn’t help her. Do you know the statistics for how many rapists spend even a day in jail as compared to rapes that are reported to us?”

“I know the statistics,” said Gulcasa. “I know that a lot of unreported assaults are unreported specifically _because_ of those statistics. I know.”

“Then ask yourself, sir,” said the officer, “just how much a chance she stands if she makes a report. Even if the officers and lawyers she reaches are the ones that aren’t too drunk on money or afraid of that man’s name to stand against him. She doesn’t even have her parents to protect her. For god’s sake. The media will drag her name through the mud. Everyone in our society would rather believe that it’s the victim’s fault than acknowledge this could happen to them too. She’ll be silenced, the same as so many other girls and women.”

Gulcasa listened to this with gritted teeth.

“Defeatism is just another way to silence victims and survivors,” he said.

The police officer shook his head.

“You can’t save her through channels like this with any manner of good intentions. She’ll need more weight on her side if you want it to work. Either find a way to protect her from the smear campaign that _will happen,_ or find a better way in general. And remember that whatever you do, if it’s something you’re pushing her into instead of letting her choose, you’re taking her personhood away from her just like he is.”

 

 

The young police officer was right, but it rankled. That was exactly why it rankled.

Gulcasa took his mood and the knot in his chest to his sisters’ gym, braided his hair back, and spent half an hour punching and roundhouse kicking one of the unoccupied punching bags until his nausea abated and his hands stopped shaking.

These were things he ought to have considered from the start, because this was about Yggdra and Nessiah’s safety and not compensating for his own childhood trauma. These were things that he hated to have to consider at all, because they were unfair and unjust. But it was like Soltier and the police had said—no one man, even with all the money and influence Gulcasa’s position meant he had at his disposal, could change all that societal injustice alone. There was nothing he could do about them, and so.

The other muscleheads at the gym gave him a wide berth as he practiced his punches. Either they read the murderous intent and upset behind his viciousness and it was scaring them away, or the other gym equipment was more interesting. It was a good thing, because he wasn’t anywhere near in the mood for dealing with other people. It was more important to work off the anxiety and the mad before he went home—Nessiah would read it on him in a heartbeat. Gulcasa did not need to scare Nessiah on top of everything else that was going wrong today.

After a couple of hours—once he’d started to feel like his skin fit his body again and his breath was making an ugly rasping in the back of his throat—he finally started to process the sensation of someone’s eyes on his back. It was a nasty prickling feeling; he’d always hated it since he’d been a kid.

Gulcasa stopped to breathe and take a surreptitious look around the gym. Everyone else seemed to be engrossed in their own workouts—and when Gulcasa swiveled around towards the direction of the big double doors to the hallway, where he thought the stare might have been coming from, he saw a brief swirl of pale hair and tutu disappearing around the corner, no more.

He returned to the punching bag and didn’t stop until the exhaustion and dehydration got so bad he could hardly stand.

He used the gym’s showers, sat for a while, flexed aching hands and made up his mind.

 

 

It was late by the time Gulcasa returned home, and this was almost certainly why Aegina was already standing in the kitchen, her hair drawn up and back into some overly complicated braid thing and her sleeves rolled up, rolling a chunk of raw fish through egg yolk and bread crumbs in a bowl.

 _“I_ was going to do that,” he sulked. Aegina furrowed her brow at him.

“Maybe you ought to come home sooner if you really mean to cook,” she said. “Your clothes are covered in sweat, what have you been doing? Go change into something less rank or I’m not giving you any.”

“You barge into _my_ kitchen, you start criticizing _my_ life…” Gulcasa complained, shaking his head as he turned and sloped off towards the stairs.

“It’s our kitchen too, you know,” Aegina yelled after him. He chose not to dignify that with a response.

He’d only gotten into his room and taken off his shirt when a light knock at the doorframe made him pause and turn: Nessiah.

They looked at each other for a very long minute, Nessiah’s gaze flicking back and forth over Gulcasa’s messed-up clothes and flyaway hair. This ended when Nessiah took a deep breath, and Gulcasa half expected him to speak, but Nessiah crossed the room in tentative catlike steps instead. Gulcasa gave up on his drawers and watched as Nessiah came to a stop, less than arm’s length away.

“What,” Nessiah said in a quiet voice, reaching out to fold both his hands around Gulcasa’s right and lifting it up to what was chest height for Nessiah but considerably below that for Gulcasa, “did you do to your hands?”

Gulcasa looked down at Nessiah’s thin, paper-pale fingers and at his own heavier, darker ones. There hadn’t really been any need to raid the first aid supplies at the gym, he’d thought at the time, and as he’d just gotten home he hadn’t had time to slap band-aids on the bigger scrapes and lacerations. His knuckles were starting to bruise, like ugly rings.

“I was working out and let my mind wander for a little too long,” Gulcasa said, which was laughably backwards but still close enough to the truth to be safe. “Bit stupid, I know. Zero out of ten, wouldn’t recommend.”

Nessiah didn’t say anything; he only considered Gulcasa’s hand for a while longer, then bowed his head, eyes half-closed. It looked almost as if he were leaning down to press his soft mouth against the injuries (Gulcasa thought, and immediately turned red).

But he didn’t do anything further; he stayed like that for about a minute more, then seemed to come out of some private reverie. Nessiah raised his face, met Gulcasa’s eyes, blushed, and turned away: But he didn’t release Gulcasa’s hands.

This, Gulcasa decided—scarcely daring to believe what he was seeing—definitely provided food for thought.

“Dinner’s ready in half an hour,” yelled Aegina from downstairs, making them both jump and quite destroying the mood.

 

 

“It looks like I’ve reached the end of the line as to how far pressuring the police will take us,” Gulcasa said much, much later. He was standing at the sink next to Aegina, doing dishes, using the running water to mask their conversation from Nessiah (who was anyway curled up on the sofa with a book, a white shadow half hidden behind Emilia and Luciana, both of whom were bathing their video game in colorful insults). “The one reasonable guy is afraid of how far south this might go. And I’ve got to admit, I’ve started to see his point.”

Aegina nodded. “I take it that it’s up to me from here.”

“We’ll still have everyone else investigating too. But yeah.”

Aegina took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I’ll do what I can. Getting to introduce her to Luciana will probably help. But she’s wary, she has every right to be, it’s going to take a while.”

“That’s fine. As long as we don’t give up.”

“We’re in too far. We can’t, now.”

Gulcasa nodded, reached over her for a sponge. They didn’t speak of it again that night.

 

 

Taken off the front lines, so to speak, Gulcasa found himself coming straight home from work more often. Sometimes he had chores or needed to pick the girls up from someplace or other, and he often brought work with him, but this did mean that he had a lot more time in proximity with Nessiah, or at least alone in the house with him.

He thought about Nessiah blushing, and about Nessiah’s handful of attempts at making dinner, quite a lot when he wasn’t chafing over Yggdra. He watched Nessiah more, and tried to keep it discreet, though he thought Nessiah probably caught him at it half the time. Both of them were still sensitive to being looked at, after all, and Nessiah more so than Gulcasa. It had only been a handful of months, after all, since Nessiah had escaped from stares unequivocally meaning trouble.

He also thought a lot about Eudy’s criticisms of how bored Nessiah must be, alone in the house all the time. Gulcasa ached to invite him out to the bookstore to pick things out for himself, even entertained daydreams of bringing Nessiah over to the in-store cafés for a coffee and snack, but that would be risky and foolish. Nessiah’s hair had gotten a bit shaggier and he wasn’t so thin and miserable-looking, but he was still recognizable. A hat and fake glasses could only take you so far when you wouldn’t go outside in pants if paid to, but making Nessiah wear clothes he was uncomfortable in wasn’t a humane option. Making him dye his hair would necessitate a salon trip or something, which would be risky too.

“If you ever do get bored and want something new to do,” he said more than once, “just let me know and I’ll get anything you need.”

“I’m all right,” Nessiah would always say, and smile, “but thank you.”

Gulcasa, who couldn’t anyway explain that he was fantasizing asking Nessiah out on dates, would just shake his head and remind Nessiah to tell him if that ever changed.

Aegina would fill him in on her surveillance of Yggdra once a week or so. They’d gotten close enough to exchange small talk whenever they got the time. Because Yggdra was no longer working herself to the point of collapse or showing up to ballet with bruised knees, Aegina had less opportunity to try to get Yggdra to confide in her. She had introduced her to Luciana by now, and had heard from Yggdra that she was only rarely in contact with her father these days.

“Apparently,” Aegina said bitterly, “she’s finding it tiresome.”

“Pretending everything’s normal _is_ tiresome,” Gulcasa said, tracing old memories. “Especially if she’s being pressured into it out of shame.”

Aegina made a face but didn’t follow that line of conversation. “Anyway, she did say that she can only really get hold of her father through his personal Skype these days—she doesn’t contact her parents enough to always get their hotel numbers, and apparently they change where they’re staying at least once a month.”

“Which is definitely not a contact method that someone who’s not close family ought to be taking, even if we can find out what it is,” Gulcasa said.

“Exactly,” Aegina replied, eyes grim and narrowed.

“Well, I’ll keep Siskier chasing them, but it takes about a month to chase down their new hotel each time anyway. I’m not expecting much. It seems more and more like if we’re going to get hold of Ordene Artwaltz, we’ll need Yggdra’s own help.”

 “I’m working on it,” said Aegina, with a stretch and a sigh. “Though it ought to go without saying, we can’t bring her here unless we’re ready to bring her in on everything.”

“I know. That’s why still working on it’s important.”

“You don’t have to tell me that much,” Aegina said, and sighed again.

 

 

The days passed, and Gulcasa’s restlessness kept building up, like leaf piles or snowdrifts. He went to the gym a lot (“You’re going to turn into a musclehead idiot your own self,” Luciana needled him), paced the house a lot (“You’re making me nervous just watching you, do that outside if you’re going to do it at all,” Aegina complained), and checked the cabinets and shopping lists compulsively (“We don’t go through food _that_ fast, we’re not you,” said Emilia, “and not even Luciana’s stupid enough to erase stuff on the list just for a laugh!”).

Even the new things he had to think about where Nessiah came in weren’t a very good distraction, because Gulcasa had to consciously check himself and gauge what would be overstepping boundaries. Siskier and Leon were resilient—Leon had had damage but it wasn’t the same—and all Gulcasa had to go on was how much he personally would have hated to be pursued aggressively while he’d still been brittle.

Siskier herself was not any help—she’d either egg him on to “just do something, it can’t hurt” or tell him with her eyes crinkling at the corners that it served him right to be put in the same situation she’d been in once. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say to that.

It remained that Nessiah still had no escape route. They still slept in the same bed, for god’s sake, and if there was anything Gulcasa couldn’t afford to linger on for too long, that was it. He’d already been reduced to hiding in the shower for an extra half hour every night, letting the hot water rattle down his back, jacking off in long strokes and breathing deep until it felt like there was no air left behind the curtain. And this wasn’t _about_ him, it couldn’t be for his own sake. Things had to progress at Nessiah’s own pace or not at all.

So he restrained himself to just watching, out of the corner of his eye or when he had the excuse to look at Nessiah anyway. It was nice that all the people he’d ever been attracted to were different—just like he’d never had to worry about blurring Siskier’s curves and effervescence together with Leon’s blunt lines and sharp angles, so Nessiah’s beauty was solely his own.

It only showed in flashes here and there, but Nessiah had a dry sense of humor. He was mannerly and soft-spoken almost all the time, but Gulcasa sometimes thought that the more relaxed Nessiah was, the less sincere those manners became. Oftentimes Gulcasa would only realize hours after the fact that Nessiah had insulted someone or was otherwise making fun. It was wicked, sly, passive-aggressive, and altogether far more endearing than it ought to be.

 _I am in over my head,_ Gulcasa thought on more than one occasion, watching the elegant outline of Nessiah’s hips through the banister supports or the shadows his fingers cast against his arms while he leaned in to listen to the girls talk. _I’m done, stick a fork in me, help._

But, of course, there wasn’t any help: Siskier just grinned sadistically, Luciana and Aegina wouldn’t want to hear it, and surely Emilia would just come over smug and look down her nose at him. Gulcasa was left to cast about for cues all on his own either way.

And Nessiah would smile—even, _very_ rarely, laugh as quietly as if in undertone—and Gulcasa would feel unbalanced, like something underneath him had tilted, like he was falling backwards with nothing to use to catch himself.

There was no relief to it.

“I have _such_ a headache,” he said, head in his hands, and then sighed and flopped back along the sofa.

“Are you asleep,” came a voice a few minutes later, and Gulcasa opened his eyes dubiously to look up at Nessiah. Gulcasa hadn’t heard him enter the room, but Nessiah was generally too quiet to betray his footsteps even if he were not—Gulcasa let his gaze slide down the sweater, trying to focus on its pattern of different browns instead of how it hugged Nessiah’s bodyline and not having much success, down the skirt made of thin enough material to show a vague silhouette of Nessiah’s legs, past the hem with a little relief—wearing knee-high socks.

“Not that I’m aware,” Gulcasa said at last, realizing too late that he’d left Nessiah’s question hanging for a little longer than usual social protocols demanded and that Nessiah was bound to realize that Gulcasa had been—as his sisters would have put it— _checking him out._ “Do you need anything?”

“No, it’s.” Nessiah raised his eyebrows and cleared his throat delicately. Gulcasa had the impression that he was holding back a smile. “I was vaguely entertaining notions of sitting down, but there’s…” He lifted both hands, spread them at shoulder-height with an artistic slow turn of the wrists, thin bones crackling. “So much more of you than there is sofa space.”

It was true, which was the only reason Gulcasa didn’t retort: The sofa was meant to seat at least three, and Nessiah had comfortably slept on it for quite a while, but stretched out on it like he was now, Gulcasa still had his knees up over one of the arm rests.

“Yeah, well,” Gulcasa said, and carefully began to push himself up, preparing to have to negotiate all his hair out from underneath him.

“You don’t have to get off the sofa entirely,” Nessiah said. He definitely sounded amused. “As long as there’s room for me to sit down too.” And he did, on the cushion Gulcasa’s head had occupied a few moments ago.

This was going to make getting up a real chore unless he wanted to brace himself with his hands all over Nessiah’s shoulder and lap, and Nessiah probably realized this too, because he said. “You can lay back down, I don’t mind, all I wanted was a place to sit that didn’t involve doing so on top of you.”

Gulcasa hesitated for a minute, then reminded himself not to be stupid, that being _too_ conscious of physical proximity would probably be just as bad as intruding on Nessiah’s personal space. He’d carried Nessiah countless times over the past few months, held him, helped him into showers and baths, still slept next to him. And he didn’t need to overthink any of _those_ things either. He rested his head and shoulders on Nessiah’s lap.

It was awkward, yeah, but it was also kind of nice. Nessiah had already leaned his left elbow against the armrest next to him, but he seemed to realize quickly that he had nowhere to put his right hand, and asked “May I?”, actually waiting for Gulcasa to say “Sure” before picking out a spot on Gulcasa’s chest to set it, fingers curled up, hand barely grazing an errant lock of Gulcasa’s hair. It was—nice. That kind of consideration. Nessiah knew that there were a lot of private things tied up with Gulcasa’s keeping his hair long, and that he was still a little leery of people touching it, obviously. But his taking that into account felt different, was easier to appreciate somehow coming from another survivor.

It was nice looking up at him, too. Nessiah’s hair hung about his face, the extra inch or so suiting him. His eyes were half-closed as he looked down at Gulcasa, and he was sort of backlit by a lamp further into the room and distant windows. Gulcasa couldn’t appreciate the effect or even identify it as well as maybe Emilia could, but he at least knew that it was nice. Nessiah’s eyes flicked back and forth, the blue eye with its milky haze over the pupil still in concert with the green. He was smiling faintly.

Gulcasa wanted more than anything to just reach up and cup Nessiah’s cheek in one hand, maybe bring him down for a kiss, but he knew better than to push it. Instead he said, “You know what I’m looking forward to the most about getting all this over with?”

Nessiah tilted his head slightly to one side. “I would have presumed not having to worry about everything would be a benefit, but from the way you’re phrasing that, I suppose that’s not it?”

“Well, there _is_ that, but.” Gulcasa closed his eyes. “I mean, as much as I hate being restless. It’s got to be worse for you, hasn’t it? I mean. I know you’re bored, you have to be bored, _I’d_ be bored out of my mind here. Eudy’s right, isn’t she?”

“One of these days,” Nessiah said, with that inimitable air of carefully buttoned-back and even unkind humor— _fond contempt,_ Gulcasa thought— “I am going to have to introduce you to the marvelous invention that they call the Internet. There is an entire website that is filled with cute cat videos. It is very difficult to be bored and despondent with those to watch. I think experiencing that might do you and those nerves of yours a lot of good.”

Gulcasa shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Okay, Youtube is all well and good, but one does tend to get sick of even the Internet after a while. There’s a thing called _outside_ that’s got its attractions too. Even if you’re perfectly happy as a shut-in, I want to give you a tour of some of those.”

“Really,” said Nessiah.

“Yeah,” said Gulcasa. “Like, we could go out to a movie, or I could take you down to a bookstore so you wouldn’t have to send somebody out with a list of things to look for at the library or order everything off Amazon, and we could go get overpriced coffee and go walk downtown. I know that these are things that you might not be okay with doing as long as this going on, and the risk of being seen and recognized by unsafe people means that it wouldn’t be smart anyway. But somewhere down the road, I really want to do that with you. It’d be good for you, and it’d just be—nice.”

Nessiah watched him through all of that, eyes narrowed just slightly, expression hard for Gulcasa to read. “Nice,” he repeated.

“Well, yeah,” Gulcasa said, trying not to sound too defensive.

“I _am_ a homebody,” Nessiah said after a while. “And I’m still not—so tired of this house that I’m taking having a safe space for granted. I don’t know if you felt the same way when you were younger, but that’s how it is with me.” He was quiet for a little longer, then added, “But it does sound like it might be nice.”

“Oh.” Gulcasa felt his face grow hot. “That’s—good, then.”

Nessiah blushed as if in answer. The unspoken word _date_ hung tangibly about, but neither of them said it out loud.

What Nessiah _did_ do was smile—just a little bit, on the edge of shyness or secrecy.

“It might be nice,” he reiterated, and for a moment Gulcasa could barely breathe for the beauty of him.


End file.
